Dreams of Anu (அனு-win கனவுகள்)

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This is one such pathetic experience what I am going to share now. In most of the Companies, either the business is driven by IT or the IT Projects are driven by the Business Process. I don’t know how to consider the below given experience as a business driven project or IT driven project.

This is one of the worst projects ever in my long career. I have seen many failed projects, but all those failures has valid reasons like scope was not frozen, due to time lines, due to changing factors in the requirement, due to the confusions from the consultants and adaptability from the customers to understand the functionalities that are available with the new system, Greek and Latin are the languages between the business and the consultants due to the lack of business knowledge for the customers.

I really don’t understand on what basis a project is being implemented in such a big organization. Is it to say that we have these products implemented in our organization or we use this product for our requirements? I really want to know 🙂

This is a scenario in which my role was a support consultant. Ultimately there was not role for me to play in this project. I was there to assist the vendor team with the current process (what is the current process, GOK – God only knows). With the support load, I was not able to be part of any of the discussions with the business or with the vendors and the way the project started its phase was really ridiculous.

Already they have a system or solution in place which is not 100% productive or in other words with lot of issues. Everyone knows the flows and flaws of the system, but they were not ready to clean up the mess which was already there in the system. Instead of cleaning that mess, they wanted to add some more features and functionalities which is being done out of the system.

The system which was used by them was like a broken boat, and we wanted the new system to be build based on the same broken boat. I don’t have a strong base and I wanted to build a huge ship on top of the broken boat.

As a support consultant, if you say that you are already in a sinking boat to the project manager or to the colleagues, beautiful answer from them was I know swimming, you don’t worry about it.

Hey man, I have to worry about it because I don’t know swimming and I can’t take the responsibility of my suicide because of you. It is not suicide and you are trying to kill me that was the thing going on in my mind.

Voice of the contractor doesn’t goes to the head of the department or the project manager or anyone who works for their own company. All my projects have to go on time, irrespective of whether it is being used by the business or not.

As usual for every success of the project the project manager will take the credit and for every failure, they will blame a scape goat.

I will start with the scape goat.

Scape Goat : Nevertheless to say

Sponsor of the project: I don’t know (whether it is from the business side or IT)

Steering committee: Only the same faces who involve discussing the issues and who has not taken any decisions for the same.

Project Manager: There was no such person who involved to be a mediator or to act like a professional bridge between the vendor and business.

Vendor : XXXX company

Vendor Consultant: A consultant to break her head for the project.

IT Team : Support team, whoever is free on that day, they will be called to attend the meetings and the information’s will not be shared with anybody else. If no one is free, no problem, we will handle it.

Testing Team: It is always said to be by business but in our case, we go with the vendor and the internal IT team, as they know the entire business in short span of time. Is it implementation or a part of add-in functionality like a new feature being introduced?

At times they will ask you to attend few meetings and later they will say not to be part of the project, because if you continue, you will not allow it to go live in the similar fashion, so as they can blame you for their failure.

Start Date: The day they did the kick off

End Date: Business is unable to move ahead without this and the Scope is limited so ASAP (it was yesterday but today is fine),

Support: Support is not by the vendors who implemented the system, it has to be by the internal support team because the internal team has a rapport with the business users and was doing the support for the entire 250 or 300 users, who has twenty ear’s and 10 mouths to respond to all the queries from the business users after go live.

Height of this support is there should not be any escalation. (Who is Chariman’s Secretary, who is COO Secretary and who is what and who is normal user all this should be known to the bl**dy support consultant)

Go Live Date: After go live one person has to go dead (They have already decided the scape goat and were waiting for the scape goat to come after the vacation)

Is it agony makes you to write, no it is my real feeling for that project and for the sake of the business.

After each day of my work, I sleep peacefully because of the satisfaction what I get, I am not here to entertain any foosl and I am here to serve for the organization goals is what needs to be in the minds of the project initiator and the driver of the project.

If someone feels that I am surviving in this organization by blaming someone for my failures, god is watching it and you have to answer for your mistakes.

Success is not measured by survivals, it is measured by the Effective Utilizations.

Scape Goats are not failures and everyone knows that it is blamed for others mistakes. I can say firmly that the projects handled in the above fashion will not yield any success either to the IT team or to the Business.